Hong Kong legend Leslie Cheung’s 8 best movies

A movie with which Wong Kar-wai became an auteur and Leslie Cheung became James Dean reincarnated. Days of Being Wild is, above all, a hymn to rebellion – an intention noticeable from Wong’s deliberate ditching of the conventional genre formula. Set in 1960s Hong Kong, playboy Yuddy’s determination to leave his foster mother to look for his unknown birth mother has been regularly compared to Hong Kong’s then-impending handover. The character’s comparison of himself to a fabled kind of ‘bird without legs’ – which thus could only land when it died – also mirrored the sense of rootlessness keenly felt by the population. This film is undoubtedly one of Cheung and Wong's most iconic works.

Starring Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui, another one of Hong Kong’s greatest music icons, as the leading roles in this contemporary ghost story, Rouge has truly been canonised as one of the greats. At the centre of it all, Mui’s hypnotic, solemn performance shines through as a ghost of a courtesan returning to look for her lover (Leslie Cheung), who did not keep to his promise of their suicide pact. Directed by Stanley Kwan, this supernatural nostalgic drama is a haunting reminder of both the transience of city life and, well, how we just don’t kill ourselves for love like we used to anymore.

Another legendary film by Wong Kar-wai that has forever left its mark in Hong Kong’s cinematic history. A pair of bickering lovers (Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung) stranded in Argentina may be an unusual idea of cinematic poetry. Still, Wong, who was named best director at Cannes for the film, managed the impossible. From a lover’s quarrel to heartbreak and departure, this lyrical break-up movie is something we can all relate to.

Loosely based on a short story from the Qing-era anthology Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio, A Chinese Ghost Story enjoyed widespread popularity across East Asia and became a cult movie among 80s audiences – including mainland China, despite the film being banned there.

The story follows Ning Choi-san (Leslie Cheung), a tax collector who takes shelter in a deserted temple and meets the beautiful Nip Siu-sin (Joey Wong Cho-yee). Ning obviously falls in love, but is warned by a Taoist priest that Nip is most likely a ghost – which she is indeed. What follows is a punishing journey where the lovers refuse to let even death keep them apart. The special effects are obviously somewhat janky by today’s standards, but that doesn’t detract from the charm of this movie – plus, some of the effects are actually still pretty scary.

Adapted from a novel of the same name by prolific Hong Kong novelist Lilian Lee, Farewell My Concubine is, to this day, the only Chinese-language movie to have received the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 1993. The film also won Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language in the same year, whilst receiving two Oscar nominations at the 66th Academy Awards.

The tragic love story tells the struggles of Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) as he falls in love with Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi), a fellow classmate whom Dieyi grew up with at an all-boys Peking opera troupe. Questioning his sexuality, facing hurt from betrayal, and heartbreak from unreturned love, the story ends with a harrowing plot twist that left many audiences in tears.

Leslie Cheung and Gong Li reunite in this hazy film about doomed love. Temptress Moon is often overshadowed by the pair’s previous hit Farewell, My Concubine with director Chen Kaige, but this period melodrama is an emotionally complex watch in its own right – and one that is much darker. The film follows the young Zhongliang as he moves into the estate of the wealthy, but declining, Pang family and is treated like a servant by everyone. He develops feelings for the opium-addicted Pang daughter, but escapes the family when the chance arises.

Years later sees Cheung’s Zhongliang working as a gigolo who seduces and scams rich women, and when he gets sent back to the Pangs for their money, he encounters his childhood love Ruyi (Gong) again. Cheung is excellent at playing the suave philanderer, the broken lover, and everything in between, aided by cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s atmospheric lens work.

Our list simply would not be complete without this classic. During a battle against an evil cult, swordsman Zhuo Yihang (Leslie Cheung) meets Lian Nichang (Brigitte Lin). The two fell madly in love, only to have it all dissolved as a misunderstanding ripped the two apart. Filled with hatred, Lian’s hair turns white and she morphs into a cold-blooded killer seeking revenge. Loosely based on Liang Yusheng’s famous Wuxia novel of the same name, a sequel was released later in the same year.

Even though John Woo’s breakthrough heroic bloodshed film is arguably more well known for Chow Yun-fat’s impossibly cool character Mark, Leslie Cheung turns in a fantastic performance as one of the three characters that have gone on to set the template for much of Hong Kong’s action films. Cheung stars as Sung Tse-kit, the younger brother of Sung Tse-ho who is a senior member of a powerful triad – the catch is that Kit is training to become a police officer. From a fresh-eyed young cadet full of hope for the future, to a bitter policeman bent on revenge, Cheung’s portrayal rounds off the trio of main characters perfectly.